Teen spent 12 hours in A&E full of drunks... only to be told she’d had a miscarriage

Heartbreak: Amy Rennie was kept waiting to see a doctor all night after going to the hospital fearing for her baby

A PREGNANT woman lost her baby after waiting 12 hours to be seen by a doctor at a hospital casualty unit overrun with drunks and drug addicts.

Amy Rennie arrived at hospital fearing the worst when she began to bleed at home.

But she had to wait all night to be examined by a doctor and moved to a ward where a scan revealed she had miscarried at tenand-a-half weeks.

The 18-year-old said: ‘I don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through. Staff were dealing with people who were drunk or on drugs first and it was just horrible. I know it can’t have been just me that’s gone through something like this.

‘So many people that night were moaning because it took hours to be seen.’

Miss Rennie’s ordeal was at the accident and emergency department of the Derrireassured ford Hospital, in Plymouth. The department – which is about to get a £30million overhaul to cope with rising demand – treats more than 300 people a day.

The hospital said it was ‘incredibly sorry’ for Miss Rennie’s loss and her long wait.

Miss Rennie, who has a one-year-old son, said she went to casualty after she had begun bleeding. After several hours waiting, a doctor entered the waiting area and advised patients that the waiting time was around seven hours.

She eventually provided a urine sample and then faced a further wait of several hours before giving a blood sample.

Miss Rennie said: ‘I explained to the nurse that I was still bleeding heavily, and she me that it was probably nothing to worry about.’

She was eventually taken to a ward and seen by a doctor at about 11am – more than 12 hours after her arrival.

‘By this point, I hadn’t slept all night, I hadn’t eaten, and up until now I’d kept being shoved into the waiting room, so I was just fed up,’ she said.

A check of her cervix also came back normal but it was not until 4pm that she was sent for a scan which revealed the presence of a baby but with no heartbeat. Miss Rennie returned to the hospital a week later and received a scan photo from the scan. She added: ‘The whole thing from start to finish was just the most horrible experience I’ve ever been through. ‘In the days that followed, I was in such a state, I couldn’t even look after my son for a few days. I’ve still not been told what caused my miscarriage, and I keep feeling like it’s my fault, even though I know it’s not.’ There is no indication that the lengthy wait contributed to the miscarriage. A spokesman for University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, which runs Derriford, said: ‘We’re incredibly sorry to hear of the patient’s loss and that a long wait impacted further on an already difficult and upsetting situation.’

‘It was horrible from start to finish’